Our People
Our experienced staff members are experts in the field of Team Performance. Like great coaches, they will challenge, guide and mentor your team to achieve new levels of performance. Their facilitative style is designed to acknowledge the experience that you bring to the process, and will allow your team the time and focus it needs to set new standards for team performance.
To do all of this we need the highest quality facilitators. So we recruit staff with years of professional, student, and community facilitation experience. We utilize staff members that work locally, nationally, and internationally, so that they understand your group, your needs, and your population. Then, we train on the specifics of our programs, and our facility. We ensure the highest standards of quality and safety for our participants. Our team is the key to our success and the success of your organization. Maintaining your safety is paramount in all that we do.
Executive Director of the Team Performance Center
Jeff Costello is the Executive Director of the Team Performance Center (TPC) at City Beach. Since 2003, he has designed and facilitated workshops in team and leadership development for nearly 400 corporate, academic, and community-based organizations from across the San Francisco Bay Area - serving over 10,000 participants, to date. His emphasis in Organization Development focuses on team and leadership processes via the platform of Experiential Education (learning through active engagement, followed by purposeful and directed reflection). With nearly twenty years in this field, he has found few other combinations of content and delivery style that yield such a profound ability to unlock the power of human collaboration.
Jeff's deep belief in the validity of experiential learning as a powerful and lasting means of transferring knowledge, developing skills, and clarifying values comes directly out of his professional "adventures" over the past two decades. While pursuing an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science (dual major in biology and chemistry), his original aim of teaching science in the classroom sparked what would eventually become a rather serendipitous journey…one which ultimately led him to City Beach and the Team Performance Center. From academia, to the athletic field, to the research lab, to some of the highest mountains in the U.S. and Canada; from outside sales, to Habitat for Humanity, to local government and philanthropy, to his current milieu with corporate Silicon Valley; he has gained a wealth of empirical data to support the premise that experiential learning, combined with a TEAM approach, is a powerful catalyst for change.
For the past 19 years, Jeff has held a wide spectrum of positions with Challenge Ropes Courses throughout the western United States and Canada - from construction and maintenance, to Lead Facilitator and Staff Trainer, to Program Director. His most recent and current stints being with The California State University East Bay and the Team Performance Center at City Beach, respectively.
Jeff is an active member of the Association for Experiential Education (AEE), American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), and Association for Challenge Course Technology (ACCT). He has also been associated through City Beach with the Bay Area Organization Development Network (BAodn) and the Northern California Chapter of Meeting Professionals International as guest speaker and workshop facilitator. He is also an accredited instructor in Wilderness First Responder, Emergency Response & CPR for the Professional Rescuer, and Medic First Aid /Adult CPR.
When not in the Team Performance Center, espousing the benefits of healthy teams and dynamic leaders, Jeff can often be found with friends and family…skiing, climbing, hiking, and exploring his beloved Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and Coast Mountains, near Whistler, British Columbia. He lives in Oakland, California.
Associate Director of the Team Performance Center
Wendy Lim, the Associate Director of the Team Performance Center (TPC) at City Beach, has over eight years of facilitation, teaching, and event planning experience. She has facilitated courses for thousands of participants with an emphasis on professional development; which has included effective communication, team dynamics, coaching, and cross-functional collaboration, among other topics. While fostering a friendly, collaborative environment, she engages teams in lively discussion and ties real life experiences to the purposeful initiatives and scenarios in which they have just participated.
Prior to her work in professional development, with a biology degree in hand and a deep passion for educating others on the "important things in life", Wendy plunged directly into teaching science to both elementary and high school students. It was here that she began to hone her signature style of innovative teaching and facilitating participant-centered learning environments. Today, when developing course content, she draws upon her early experiences in the classroom - along with her more recent organizational, leadership, and human development skills - to enhance the participants' experiences (truly customizing programs to connect with audiences of all backgrounds).
As you can probably surmise, Wendy recognizes and values the importance of teams…whether that be in the conference room, on the volleyball court, or even jamming down the slopes with family and friends on her snowboard. No, her snowboard is not THAT big…if they want to keep up, they've got to bring their own boards!